CLIFFORD GEERTZ AS A REFERENCIAL TO NURSING STUDIES ABOUT HEALTH ORGANIZATION CULTURE

Abstract

Historically, nurses have occupied a special place in health organizations. This, in addition to being the attention center and administration of nursing reasons why many researches seek to understand the complexity of these spaces. The organizational culture study has been shown as a possibility of comprehension of the health organization’s realities, and the search of a theoretical and methodological reference that sustains nursing research about this topic, gave rise to this article. The reading of the following works by Clifford Geertz: “The Local Knowledge”, “Culture Interpretations” and “New Light Over Antropology”, led to reflection about the pertinence of the author’s conception for research about health organization culture. The authors considered the culture as a system of relations and meanings that allows an intelligible description of behaviors, values, beliefs and principles built by citizens, and using ethnography as a research device, assists in the uncovering of nursing’s performance. It’s concluded that this vision allows the understanding of the structure of relations that happens inside the health organizations, favoring matters related to workers, management and, consequently, to users and society, besides strengthening the building process of the knowledge of nursing.